Category: Videos & Docs.

Lana Del Rey has never downplayed her affection for Nancy Sinatra — you might remember she called herself a “self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra” back in the “Video Games” days. Now, out of nowhere, she’s covering a song Nancy made famous with Lee Hazelwood in 1967. LDR’s “Summer Wine” clip comes only weeks after her version of Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” and like that cover, this one is pretty damn faithful to the original. Also like that song, this one has no compelling reason to exist, but doesn’t make the world a more horrible place, either. The vid itself is filmed on a Super 8 (or some equivalent vintage equipment), and like everything else in the visual world today, looks like an Instagram product. Check it out.

MOJO magazine, delve into the prehistory of electronic music’s greatest group, to deliver the story of Kraftwerk that the curator of their official legend, the genius that is Ralf Hütter, would rather you didn’t read. With input from early collaborators, including Eberhard Krahnemann and Michael Rother, it starts in the ruins of post-war Germany, takes in “the best Beatles covers band in the whole of Westphalia” and ends with the revelation of Autobahn. The following video playlist tracks their rise – with five tracks representing their kosmische-krautrock infancy – and beyond, to their early-’80s pop regency and enduring status as icons of aheadness.

1. Ruckzuck, 1970

Live on German TV, with Kraftwerk modelling their groovy, pre-canonical sound – as hymned in the latest MOJO – as Ralf rocks a less-pervy-Irmin-Schmidt “look”. Some of Der Kinder look pretty spooked, while others appear to suspect some kind of art-scam is being perpetrated. Great free jazz apocalypse ending.

2. Truckstop Gondolero, 1971

With Neu!‘s Michael Rother (guitar) and Klaus Dinger (drums) providing motorik undercarriage and Florian looking a bit Village People in a pair of dungarees. And Ralf on sabbatical.

3. Koln II, 1971

As above, but more cosmic. An idea of what a free-er, more Krautrocky Kraftwerk might have sounded like.

4. Kakteen, Wüste, Sonne, 1971

As above, but lumpier – in a good way. Dinger has the dungarees this time, and he’s going bananas.

5. French documentary, 1973

A special on Kosmische Music featuring Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, bizarrely introduced from a building site soundtracked by Little Walter. Nice footage between 1.50 and 6.00.

6. Tanzmusic, 1973

Dig the Werk’s Open University lecturer chic, Wolfgang’s moustache and the earliest evidence we can find of the neon signs.

7. Autobahn, 1975

Tomorrow’s World’s Raymond Baxter introduces the future of music. Kraftwerk promise jackets with electronic lapels that can be played by touch. But here’s another, excellent live version of Autobahn, with a starring role for the home-made drums.

8. Radioactivity

Kraftwerk’s techno chic grows in sophistication, although the silver-gloved robot hands are a tad more Cyberman than Deep Blue. Still, what a heartbreaking tune.

Kraftwerk’s fusion of art, beats and electronics has become a template copied by musicians everywhere. Now they plan to take London’s Tate Modern by storm

Kraftwerk on their 1981 UK tour. Photograph: Fraser Gray/Rex Features

Back in September 1975, a band played in Britain for the very first time. On stages from Croydon to Bath, from Southport to Yeovil, they wore smart suits and ties and played peculiar instruments. There was no clamour for tickets, no feverish press. This review of a half-full show in Newcastle was par for the course: “Spineless, emotionless sound with no variety, less taste… [and] damn little attempt to pull off anything experimental, artistically satisfying or new,” wrote Keith Ging in theMelody Maker. “For God’s sake,” he railed, “keep the robots out of music.”

Here in the 21st century, Kraftwerk‘s forthcoming gigs at Tate Modernare the hottest tickets around. Back in December, demand for themcrashed the gallery’s website; angry fans who missed out stormed the venue, while thousands raged online. For eight nights in February, Ralf Hütter, Fritz Hilpert, Henning Schmitz and Falk Grieffenhagen will play each Kraftwerk album since 1974 in turn – from their fourth, Autobahn, to 2003’s Tour De France Soundtracks – with 3D film versions of their iconic visuals. They will wear neoprene neon suits and stand behind expensive technology. They did the same to rapturous reception in 2012 at New York’s Moma and at the Kunstammlung in their hometown, Düsseldorf, last month.

These are art-event spectaculars to which everyone wants entry because no other band since the Beatles has given so much to pop culture. Kraftwerk’s beats laid the foundations for club music: for hip-hop, synth-pop, techno and house. The sounds they invented have beensampled by hundreds of artists, from Madonna to R.E.M, from Missy Elliott to Fergie. Coldplay and Jay-Z have had hits with their elegant melodies and their image has influenced David Bowie, Daft Punk and Kanye West. We also now live in the kind of world their future-obsessed lyrics predicted: we find Computer Love online, models smile from time to time and Europe Endless exists.

For hardcore followers, the fact that this band named after a power station are playing in one is also irresistible. The band that remaining founder member Hütter always called musikarbeiter – musical workers – will be creating energy themselves, in their own Turbine Hall.

Kraftwerk’s story begins in 1968, in Düsseldorf, a city closer to Belgium, Holland and France than the Iron Curtain. Two young men born just after the end of the second world war meet on a music improvisation course. Ralf Hütter plays keyboards, Florian Schneider the flute; they perform their first gig at the city’s Cream Cheese Club. Playing in Organisation, a progressive, free-form group, they become obsessed with synthesisers, which are newly invented. In 1970, the wealthy Schneider buys one. The same year, they see Gilbert and George in the city’s Kunsthalle: two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider start bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk’s first three albums do not feature in the Tate gigs, but they hold clues to the aesthetic roots of the band. The cover art for Kraftwerk(1970) and Kraftwerk 2 (1972) have pop art traffic cones on their sleeves, suggesting a more industrial take on Warhol’s Velvet Underground banana. Tracks have mechanical titles, such as Spule 4 (Inductor 4) and Wellelange (Wavelength), and then come the songs about Germany. Some, such as Heimatklänge (The Bells of Home), are gentler, but Von Himmel Hoch (From Heaven Above) is provocative. Named after a carol by Bach, it features synthesisers replicating the sounds of warplanes and bombs. It also reveals Kraftwerk trying to make a new national music, rooted in everyday sounds, made by machines that offered a new future.

Next came Autobahn, named after another German invention. In spring 1975, a radio edit of its 22-minute title track became an international hit. Its synthesisers mimicked fast traffic and car horns; its celebration of driving clicked with western audiences. Soon after, Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos joined the band on electronic percussion, as did the new smart aesthetic on stage. Electronic music suddenly had its John, Paul, George and Ringo, although they looked and sounded very different to the rock bands of the time.

It’s hard to appreciate how alien Kraftwerk appeared back then. The first advert for Autobahn in the black-and-white NME looks particularly shocking: a bright blue sign from the future, under a feature on country music divorcees. At the time, the song was dismissed as a gimmick by the press – but not by fans who made it a No 11 hit.

Then came the xenophobia. The war was still a recent, scorching cultural memory, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that a Barry Miles live review was headlined “This is what your fathers fought to save you from”. The NMEreprinted a feature by US critic Lester Bangs, in which Hütter was asked if Kraftwerk was “the final solution” for music. The image with the piece was even more tasteless: a press shot superimposed on to a Nuremberg rally.

It’s not that Kraftwerk didn’t flirt with sinister ideas. Radio-Activity (1975) began with the sound of a geiger counter, evoking nuclear dread. But their music also played with double meanings and humour. Ohm Sweet Ohm (say it out loud) took central European pop into the realm of technology, while Radio-Activity‘s title track hinted at the utopian possibilities of the wireless. (It also says much that the 1991 remix of this song mentioned power stations Sellafield and Chernobyl in negative terms.) Throughout the melodies and methods, their vocal lines and lyrics, there is a touching innocence and simplicity.

Hütter often namechecked the Bauhaus movement, and liked its internationalism. The band’s songs started to feature words in different languages; they got inspired by James Brown’s funk, and even punk (years later, Hütter admitted that the start of 1977’s Showroom Dummies – “eins-zwei-drei-vier” – came from The Ramones’ “one-two-three-four”). Autobahn’s chorus The (“wi’r fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n”) echoed The Beach Boys’ Fun, Fun, Fun. But a statement of Hütter’s from 1979, pinned to a noticeboard in Chris Petit’s cult film Radio On, reveals how Kraftwerk linked the past and the present. “We are the children of Fritz Lang and Werner von Braun,” it began, naming the film director who fled the Nazis, and the scientist who made the V-2 bomb and the Apollo mission rocket, Saturn V. “We are the link between the 20s and 80s. All change in society passes through a sympathetic collaboration with tape recorders, synthesisers and telephones. Our reality is an electronic reality.”

This forward-thinking spirit had already started to infect pop. David Bowie adored Kraftwerk, writing the track V-2 Schneider for his 1977 albumHeroes (the band would namecheck him back on Trans-Europe Express). African American DJs also found an odd kinship with the Germans. Keen to find a new musical language, they were familiar with the urban sounds Kraftwerk were using; 1978’s The Robots became particularly influential on the dancefloor, and in the burgeoning B-Boy and breakdancing scenes. Afrika Bambaataa fused the melody of Trans-Europe Express and the rhythm of 1981’s Numbers to create Planet Rock, one of hip-hop’s pioneering tracks. Trailblazing electro group Cybotron used a loop from 1977’s Hall of Mirrors; its founder, Juan Atkins, would create techno, and from there came modern dance culture.

Back in Britain, New Order would sample Uranium on Blue Monday, while synth-pop inspired by albums such as 1978’s The Man-Machine would set the decade’s pop mood. Kraftwerk would even get a No 1 single, The Model, in February 1982, four years after its first release. It was if the world was finally catching up with them.

Ever since, using a Kraftwerk sample has been shorthand for credibility. Jay-Z’s 1997 Sunshine sampled The Man-Machine, while Coldplay’s Talk made a melody from Computer World into a stadium-rock riff. Music producer DJ Food, a collector of Kraftwerk cover versions, says the band’s influence can be heard today among the micro-genres that have evolved from dance and R&B. “Hear dubstep producer 6Blocc’s cheeky reinterpretation of Numbers/Computer World 2 disguised under the title,Digits. Or across the pond, juke and footstep producers such as Traxman have shoe-horned Kraftwerk samples into songs such as The Robot. Kraftwerk have been part of the lineage of dance culture since the late 70s – approaching it without them is impossible.”

Once the world started to catch up, Kraftwerk started to slow down. They have only released four studio records since 1983: 1986’s disappointingElectric Cafe, 1991 remix album The Mix, Expo 2000, a single for a German world trade fair, and 2003’s Tour De France Soundtracks. The line-up has also changed radically. Flür and Bartos both left in the late 1980s, Schneider in 2009. Hütter has said little about his co-founder’s departure, except that Schneider hadn’t really been involved for years. The mystery continues.

What Kraftwerk are about now is the souped-up live experience. Playing in galleries, they align themselves with art over pop. Catherine Wood, curator of contemporary art and performance at Tate Modern, has had several meetings with Hütter. He approached her about his idea for the shows in 2010, through German gallery owner Monika Sprüth. Wood was then flown out to Düsseldorf, where she visited Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang studios. This notoriously mysterious space, where outside contact has always been forbidden, even by telephone, was moved 10 miles outside the city four years ago. Inside, Wood found an impeccable, minimalist office and a huge studio, with four robots against a wall, lit in glowing green lights.

“I was struck by how clever Hütter was,” says Wood. “He talked about the seductive nature of music and how it does something to people that art doesn’t do. He also talked about how music creates gods, but art doesn’t.” He seemed in awe of that process, she says, but not affected by it. He then showed her some 3D films for the show, developed by Emil Schult, who has worked on their cover art since the 70s.

The odd thing, Wood continues, is that Tate Modern is not really connected to the music world. In a very practical way, Kraftwerk aren’t either – they rarely do interviews, don’t do TV and never hang out at parties. “But so much modern art is about the machine replacing the human,” she says, such as the work of Gerhard Richter, who recently had a retrospective there. Interestingly, Richter taught in Düsseldorf in the late 60s and early 70s: one of his pupils was Emil Schult.

Hütter also took a tour of the Tate last year, Wood adds. It was a busy day and he made no effort to hide. Nobody ran to shake his hand or even noticed his presence, in huge contrast to the Turbine Hall scenes in December. It’s because Kraftwerk is about much more than one man, or four men. The robots have become part of our music and we have, very happily, become part of their machine.

STARS ON KRAFTWERK

JUAN ATKINSMusician; father of techno
I liked Kraftwerk from the first time I heard them on Showroom Dummies; the first single I bought was The Robots. Their music was totally synthesised, really pure, very melodic and very funky, and that was hard to do with early electronics. They also listened to James Brown a lot, and you can hear that. I was inspired by the precision and the tightness of their sound… they were a cog that changed the direction of things. Without them, electronic music would be totally different. There probably wouldn’t even be dance music.

Read more about how Kraftwerk legacy remains here: http://bit.ly/13pCu3M

The film was directed by Tom Berninger, brother to the band’s frontman Matt, and follows the Brooklyn outfit on their globe-trotting tour behind 2010′s High Violet.

“When my brother asked me along on tour as a roadie, I thought I might as well bring a camera to film the experience,” Tom explains in the film’s press release. “What started as a pretty modest tour documentary has, over the last two and a half years, grown into something much more personal, and hopefully more entertaining.”

The film’s premiere on Wednesday night will be followed by a special performance by the band. For more information, including ticketing, consult the festival’s official site.

Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, who has been in a semi-conscious state since a 2008 car accident, died early Saturday morning, his family announced. He was 42. In a statement posted on the fan site Oneloveforchi.com, Cheng’s family writes that the musician was taken to the emergency room where he died at 3 a.m.

“He left this world with me singing songs he liked in his ear,” wrote Jeanne Marie Cheng, or “Mom J” for short.

Cheng suffered major injuries and was left in a coma following a November 2008 car crash in Santa Clara, Calif. The bassist was driving with his sister when they collided with another car, sending his vehicle rolling. He was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle. His sister was wearing hers, and only sustained minor injuries.

“Chi is one of the strongest people I know, and I’m praying that his strength will get him through this,” Moreno said at the time on the Deftones’ blog.

In the years since, Cheng had been making slow but steady progress in his recovery. In 2009 it was reported that he was no longer in a coma but in a semi-conscious state. A year later, doctors said he was “showing signs of improved neuro function.” Recently he regained limited ability to move his legs on command.

Most updates regarding Cheng since his accident have come through the Oneloveforchi site, which was started by fan Gina Blackmore. The site, which is currently down likely due to incresased traffic, has raised money for Cheng’s medical expenses and the bassist’s family regularly posts messages there.

Cheng co-founded Deftones in the late 1980s with fellow Sacramentoans Moreno, Stephen Carpenter and Abe Cunningham. He was an integral part of the nu-metal band’s success, performing on their first five albums, released between 1994 and 2006. Commercially the group peaked in 2000 with the platinum-selling “White Pony,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and contained the hit “Change (In the House of Flies).” A self-titled followup in 2003 debuted at No. 2.

In late 2008, they were putting the finishing touches on the next full-length album, titled “Eros.” Following Cheng’s accident, the band ultimately decided to shelve the project and later recruited Sergio Vega, formerly of Quicksand, to play bass. They have released two albums since. Read more about Chi Cheng here: http://bit.ly/ZUKbXq

The Cheng family statement is below:

Our dearest Family,

This is the hardest thing to write to you. Your love and heart and devotion to Chi was unconditional and amazing. I know that you will always remember him as a giant of a man on stage with a heart for every one of you. He was taken to the emegency room and at 3 am today his heart just suddenly stopped. He left this world with me singing songs he liked in his ear.

He fought the good fight.You stood by him sending love daily. He knew that he was very loved and never alone. I will write more later. I will be going through the oneloveforchi and any other information may not be reliable. If you have any stories or messages to share please send them to the onelove site. Please hold Mae and Ming and the siblings and especially Chi’s son, Gabriel in your prayers. It is so hard to let go.

Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos sometimes lasted just a few brief seconds, and sometimes a little while longer. Either way, they became a signature of Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and fans made a sport of seeing whether they could spot the elusive director. From 1927 to 1976, Hitchcock made 37 appearances in total, and they’re all nicely catalogued by Hitchcock.TVand the clip above. Read more about Hitchcock here: http://bit.ly/XKNMNM

The Academy Award winning director talks about his nod to heist films and classic noir

Director Danny Boyle used electronic and retro jazz sounds in the new art-heist film “Trance.” (Fox Searchlight)

In the films of English director Danny Boyle, music frequently emerges as an important (if unseen) character. The drug-addict drama Trainspotting was fueled by a jam-packed, manic soundtrack of songs by Iggy Pop, Brian Eno and the electronic duo Underworld. He teamed up with Indian composer A.R. Rahman for 127 Hours and the highly successful Slumdog Millionaire, for which Boyle won a Best Director Oscar.

His new movie Trance, starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson, pays homage to two beloved genres: the high-tech heist movie and shadowy film noir.

Boyle enlisted a frequent collaborator, Rick Smith of Underworld, to craft dance beats for action sequences, while using pre-existing jazz and French chanson for sequences involving hypnosis and dreams.

Known for using pre-existing songs, Boyle doesn’t use a music supervisor and selects tracks himself. “It’s one of the deepest pleasures for me. It helps shape the film in so many ways, [beyond] just the music. It informs the film completely for me,” he told Soundcheck‘s John Schaefer. “I’m very proud to be able to associate myself with these artists via film.”

He talked with John Schaefer about choosing music for Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Read more the conversation here: http://wny.cc/ZpoOi0

JS: On using “Deep Blue Day” from Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois’ album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, for the notorious Trainspotting scene involving “the worst toilet in Scotland”:

DB: That album is, to me, one of the greatest atmospheric albums ever. It is just an extraordinary piece of work. I’ve used it multiple times. I used it in a TV series before I moved into films. And I used it so many times, in so many different ways, that eventually Brian Eno wrote to me and said, “I’ve done other things, you know.”

JS: Tell us about a song that you thought would be perfect for a scene, but couldn’t get permission to use.

DB: We tried to get Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” for 28 Days Later. There’s an amazing sequence where [Cillian Murphy’s character, Jim] walks home. London is deserted, apparently apart from this threat, and he finds his way back to his old home where his parents lived. And he finds them in bed, passed away. They passed away peacefully and left a message for him. It’s very moving within this apocalyptic horror.

And her amazing song was [initially] on the soundtrack. And we approached her about it, and she said she didn’t want it to be associated with anything else because she wanted to do something else with it in the near future. So she declined, and I was really sad. [Theatrically] Really sad.

But her decision was a good one – and good things come out of it. And we used a hymn instead which actually had an even greater significance instead, especially for a British audience. You’re trying to suggest the past of the city, and hymns sonically do that. Something that we’re all familiar with through schooling, and so we used “Abide With Me.”

JS: Will there be a third film in the 28 Days Later zombie franchise?

DB: I wish we’d had shares in The Walking Dead, the TV show! There had been a whole zombie movement, and then I think we helped refresh it with 28 Days Later. […] I was very keen for it not to be known as a zombie movie. I had this idea that the threat is much more rage-filled. But it’s become absorbed in the zombie landscape and is referred to constantly as a zombie movie. I have to accept that. [laughs] I’m lucky to be there. There is an idea for a third part, cause we did a 28 Weeks Later, and so the 28 Months Later or whatever it would be called — the third one — there is a plan for that. How realistic it is given the success of something like Walking Dead, I have no idea. Who knows? Fingers crossed.